Pentoxifylline (1-(5-oxohexyl)-3,7-dimethylxanthine), abbreviated PTX, is a xanthine derivative which has seen widespread medical use for the increase of blood flow. PTX is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,422,307 and 3,737,433. Metabolites of PTX were summarized in Davis et al., Applied Environment Microbiol. 48:327, 1984. A metabolite of PTX is 1-(5-hydroxyhexyl)-3,7-dimethylxanthine, designated M1 and as a racemic mixture. M1 (racemic mixture) was also disclosed as increasing cerebral blood flow (as opposed to just increasing blood flow) in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,515,795 and 4,576,947. In addition, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,833,146 and 5,039,666 disclose use of shorter chain tertiary alcohol analogs of xanthine for enhancing cerebral blood flow. In subsequent metabolism studies, PTX was found to be metabolized to the S enantiomer.
Furthermore, U.S. Pat. No. 4,636,507 describes an ability of PTX and M1 (racemic mixture), to stimulate chemotaxis in polymorphonuclear leukocytes in response to a stimulator of chemotaxis. PTX and related tertiary alcohol substituted xanthines inhibit activity of certain cytokines to affect chemotaxis (U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,965,271 and 5,096,906). Administration of PTX and GM-CSF decrease tumor necrosis factor (TNF) levels in patients undergoing allogeneic bone marrow transplant (Bianco et al., Blood 76: Supplement 1 (522A), 1990). Reduction in assayable levels of TNF was accompanied by reduction in bone marrow transplant-related complications. However, in normal volunteers, TNF levels were higher among PTX recipients. Therefore, elevated levels of TNF are not the primary cause of such complications.
It is common practice to market a drug with a chiral center as a racemate. The M1 metabolite has only been disclosed exclusive of its chirality. In fact, M1 appears to be made (metabolically in humans) only as the S isomer. The approach of manufacturing and dosing drugs as racemic mixtures means that each dose of a drug is contaminated with an equal weight of an isomer, which usually has no therapeutic value and has the potential to cause unsuspected side effects. For example, the sedative thalidomide was marketed as a racemate. The desired sedative activity resided in the R-isomer, but the contaminating S-isomer is a teratogen, causing the birth defects in babies born to mothers using this drug. The R,R-enantiomer of the tuberculostatic ethambutol can cause blindness. The lethal side effects associated with the nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drug benoxaprofen (Oraflex) might have been avoided had the drug been sold as a pure enantiomer.
The issue of enantiomeric purity is not limited to the field of pharmaceuticals. For example, ASANA (.sup.1 Pr=isopropyl) is a synthetic pyrethroid insecticide which contains two asymetric centers. The potent insecticidal activity resides overwhelmingly in just one of four possible stereoisomers. Moreover, the three non-insecticidal stereoisomers exhibit cytotoxicity toward certain plant species. Therefore, ASANA can only be sold as a single stereoisomer because the mixed stereoisomers would not be suitable.
Therefore, there is a need in the art to discover effective therapeutic compounds that are safe and effective for human or animal administration and that can maintain cellular homeostasis in the face of a variety of inflammatory stimuli, and that are enantiomerically pure to have activity residing in a single isomer. The present invention was made in a process of looking for such compounds.